one year down…

This past Saturday, June 24th, marked the one year anniversary of reddit.

Frankly, we’re a little surprised to still be here, let alone doing this well. But we’re very grateful.

Like so much over this past year, the timing couldn’t have been better. It seems like everywhere we read about a competitor, someone is speaking up for the site run by three guys without VC funding from an apartment three thousand miles from the Valley. Chris, you don’t count as a full person until you either quit grad school or get your PhD.

Reddit’s fantastic growth hasn’t come from a PR firm or from advertising (not counting paulgraham.com) — you the users have spreddit (sorry, I couldn’t help myself) across the globe (really, our FM survey data shows that roughly 50% of you are not living in the USA, very cool).

Basically, this seemed like a good excuse to thank you all. Let’s face it, no one would visit this site if it weren’t for the community. We brag about you… well, maybe not all of you 😉 but most of you. Furthermore, you tell us when we’ve screwed up, how we can improve reddit, and even when we’ve occasionally done something right. We know how lucky we are to be doing this, so we’re trying to deserve it.

This also seemed like a good time to display the original version of our alien mascot (check today’s reddit logo). There were a few more incarnations that I’m grudgingly going to show over the next couple of days. I know they’re a bit rough, but just so you know, I can hear you laughing.

Anyway, thanks.

We’re far from done, so hopefully we’ll get to thank you again in another year.